Tapatalk and ForumRunner users: A vulnerability in Vbulletin allowed hackers to insert redirect links to some crappy filemanager software. We have disabled plugins and custom bb tags temporarily just to be safe until Vbulletin releases a fix. Please bookmark forum.destructoid.com instead of using google's links to avoid old cached pages that might redirect you.

It's breathtakingly mediocre in my mind. It does nothing unforgivable (besides Chief and Cortana's shallow, dysfunctional high school relationship, perhaps), but it really does nothing to wow me in any of its portions. The single player is whatever with a few cringeworthy moments; the co-op episodes are short and equally forgettable; and the multiplayer is serviceable with only a few balance issues (like the DMR being a hitscan weapon with no recoil or bloom whatsoever, and there being no maps to accommodate close-quarters/arena-style fighting). Every facet of the game is outdone by a previous installment -- I can't think of any portion of Halo 4 I can hold up and proudly proclaim, "It does this particular thing better than any other installment." Oh, and once again: Fuck the maps.

I really do find rampancy to be the biggest let down. There's a lot of potential to be creative with that idea. Even if the idea of a homicidal AI has been done before, you can still expand upon it and add a fresh twist to it, like having Cortana leading Chief into traps or ambushes and playing them off as accidents, to the point where Chief has to come to terms with the fact that he has to get rid of Cortana before she degrades even further and really tries to pull off some kind of a stunt that'll kill them all. I would have genuinely felt bad for Chief once he reached the conclusion that he would have to put her down against her will. Or if we really must have a romantic element to it (I rather despise romance in stories, since they tend to be a cheap and easy way for writers to garner sympathy for characters without having to work for it), have her try to kill everyone around Chief (again, playing them off as accidents) out of jealousy so she can keep Chief to herself (which then leads to a similar moment where he has to grapple with the need to let her go and destroy her). There's just so much potential, so much room to run with the idea, so many avenues to explore with it, and they phoned the whole thing in with a Twilight romance.

The Mammoth part was pretty buggy I found which made for a lot of laughter as the Mammoth slaughtered us. Reminded me of Gears 2 which for me was a good thing. The Pelican part reminded me of Reach with the Falcon going to disable the jammers except each area in that was different and had its own dangers. I don't like the design for the Pelican either which is a shame for me because it had always been one of my favourite fictional vehicles. It was practically a character like the DB5 to James Bond. That's not something I'll blame 343 for though but the individual cockpit thing I thought was lame.

I don't know why they'd even bother with a story in a Halo game. They should have like one cutscene right at the beginning, where Master Chief comes out and gives a little monologue about shooting your friends and having fun. I played the shit out of 3 and I really could not tell you what that game was about.

I had no problem with the treatment of Cortana's rampancy, aside from how quickly she cycled through the stages thereof. And I feel like there's a good chance that she was able to keep it together more than the average AI due both to her long-running connection with Master Chief and her being cloned from a real human mind, never mind a genius' (Halsey's), thus making her something of an undiscovered country in regards to artificial intelligence. And besides, rampancy does not necessarily mean outright homicidal tendencies; it just refers to an unraveling of whatever an AI considers sanity. Breakdowns occur in all sorts of different ways in living intelligences, so there's no reason it can't be similar for artificial ones.

I can agree with Hatman's issues on the new characters, though. They seem like shells or archetypes at best, with Lasky being the only one with any real backstory. Backstory you need to watch the Forward Unto Dawn series to know about. That's one of the biggest problems, really; there are so many nods to the books, graphic novels, and other expanded universe stuff that it makes the super-fanboys squee, but at the same time, they don't bother explaining much of those extraneous bits at all for those who haven't got a Halo library in their livingroom, thus leaving the better part of their audience out in the cold. Sarah Palmer seems like she could be interesting, and some of the other characters featuring in Spartan Ops, if they bothered giving them more characterization than the occasional order delivery and radio chatter, but there's just no follow-up.

I'm hoping they remedy this in later seasons of Spartan Ops, given this first one's probably due to be all about OMG REQUIEM WOT'S GOING ON, but I'm not getting those hopes too high.

I'm not speaking of what it is or isn't -- I'm simply speaking of what it could have been. Ultimately, "AI rampancy" is a made-up bullshit concept without any factual precedent, so a writer/creator has ultimate control and final say over what it is or isn't. When presented with this task, the team in charge took the least imaginative route that they could in applying it to the story ("Let's just turn Cortana into a nagging megabitch and call it a day") and wasted a lot of potential fun that they could have had with it instead.

Truth be told, I really just despise Cortana altogether in this game and the personality they grafted onto her. I'd probably take any alternative to these issues besides the ones 343 ended up with.

The Mammoth part was pretty buggy I found which made for a lot of laughter as the Mammoth slaughtered us. Reminded me of Gears 2 which for me was a good thing. The Pelican part reminded me of Reach with the Falcon going to disable the jammers except each area in that was different and had its own dangers. I don't like the design for the Pelican either which is a shame for me because it had always been one of my favourite fictional vehicles. It was practically a character like the DB5 to James Bond. That's not something I'll blame 343 for though but the individual cockpit thing I thought was lame.

Also they managed to make finally flying a Pelican boring. That level was horrible.